Nile Gardiner is a Washington-based foreign affairs analyst and political commentator. A former aide to Margaret Thatcher, Gardiner has served as a foreign policy adviser to two US presidential campaigns. He appears frequently on American and British television, including Fox News Channel, BBC, and Fox Business Network.

Elizabeth II: leader of the free world? The Queen is far more popular in America than President Obama

According to a recent CBS News/ New York Times poll, Queen Elizabeth II has a 61 percent favourable rating among Americans, with a mere 7 per cent holding an unfavourable view of the British monarch (a further 25 per cent are undecided). That compares with an average job approval rating this week of 45.5 percent for the US president according to RealClear Politics, with some recent polls placing him as low as 41 percent.

Prince William was just behind the Queen with 57 per cent approval, with Kate Middleton polling at 45 percent (with 43 per cent undecided, bearing in mind that the survey was conducted almost two weeks ago, before much of the publicity surrounding the royal wedding.) Only Prince Charles was less popular than the polling average for Barack Obama, with an approval rating of 38 percent. The late Princess Diana remains immensely popular in America, with 75 percent of Americans declaring a favourable opinion of her, nine points higher than her approval rating in Britain.

The CBS/New York Times poll also showed strong support in the US for the monarchy in Britain, with 71 per cent saying the Royal family “is a good thing” for the British people, with just 15 per cent against. A striking 18 per cent of Americans (almost one in five of the electorate) thought a royal family would actually be a good thing for the United States too.

While President Obama is having another “annus horribilis”, with significantly declining popularity at home, Americans retain a great deal of affection for both the Queen and the Royal family. In fact, the Queen’s approval rating in the United States has dropped just 5 points in 58 years since Gallup first asked the American public for their opinion of the new Queen following her coronation, when 66 percent said they had a positive opinion of her.

And as Gallup noted in a report it published in 2002, no woman was admired by Americans more in the period 1948 – 2001 than Queen Elizabeth, appearing no less than 38 times in the top 10 of Gallup's annual survey of the public's most admired men and women, significantly ahead of Jackie Kennedy in second.

Most Americans clearly recognise the huge scale of the Queen’s achievement as reigning monarch for nearly six decades. She has been an impeccable representative for Britain on the world stage, and has epitomised the Special Relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom during the course of no less than 11 US presidencies. The Queen is a model of Anglo-American world leadership, and has won the hearts and affection of the American people from the days of Eisenhower to the present, a towering accomplishment by one of the truly great figures of our time.